Is Vista ready yet for prime time? 4

[johnk]

We are a small application develoment shop. Recently we had our first experience where a customer bought a new workstation with Vista. On it our application runs only for users with Administrative permission, and the Vista workstation cannot work with a printer.
Is your experience different?


John Kisner

 

[linney]

Are you ready for Vista? As with all things new there is a settling in period. Drivers suitable for Vista have to be located and installed, and sometimes if they are not available, new hardware purchased, or older operating systems retained.

Built-in Administrator Account Disabled

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsvistasecurity/archive/2006/08/27/windowsvistasecurity_.aspx

How to troubleshoot a program that does not run as expected after it is installed on Windows Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931362/en-us

 

[dilettante]

I'd have to agree with linney but I'll admit I haven't had any experience with Vista yet myself. It's pretty clear there is a learning curve, some networking differences, driver support issues, and so on.

Lots of old programs will have the problem you're describing though. In many cases this can be addressed by rewriting the software to conform with standards that go back to Windows 2000 or XP which Vista now enforces. In other cases Vista introduces new standards that it also enforces.

One place to start is

http://devreadiness.org/

and you'll want to check out the Files library there. Lots of documentation, presentations, and a few important application testing tools.

 

[johnk]

Thanks for your response dilettante. Any particular checklist type of documentation I can look for?


John Kisner

 

[cpjust]

Here's a place you might want to start at for porting your app to be Vista compliant:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=904&SiteID=1

 

[dilettante]

I wish I could recommend a nice subset of those documents and other files. Sadly they overlap each other in some areas, and then some topics can only be found in one... or part of a topic is covered in one place and part in another, etc.

It's a real mess.

I downloaded pretty much all of the ones I thought looked any good at all (and a few more) into a folder on my hard drive. Then I pointed Copernic Desktop Search at it and had it index everything. This helps some, especially since Copernic will "preview" the hits so I don't have to completely open each one to browse them. Your mileage may vary, etc. and I assume most desktop search tools are about as good.

 

[markdmac]

is Vista ready for prime time? Speaking personally I would say both Yes and No.

My laptop which runs Vista Ultimate works just fine with the only exception of a lack of good power management. When the battery gets low the system just hibernates without warning. This is due to a lack of vendor support for an older laptop model.

On my desktop which is running Vista Ultimate x64 I find my experience to be more frustrating. There is a complete lack of applications and tools available. Microsoft has only "patched" the admin pack, it still does not have full functionality and Exchange tools flat out don't run on Vista.

I installed my Vista x64 thinking things would run better going forward but adoption is VERY slow and backward compatability is a joke.

I love the Vista interface but that is about it. The enhanced security goes so far that it only serves to frustrate. Because I do so much scripting, I had to disable UAC. There are some WMI classes not working yet on Vista that are slated for a fix in SP1 (due hopefully in August/September). I think that a lot more people will begin their updates when the first SP is released.

Your mileage and experience may vary. The opinions above are my own and not that of my employer.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[dilettante]

Because I do so much scripting, I had to disable UAC.

Can you elaborate on this?

I haven't seen much in the way of specifics about scripting vs. UAC. For example does pretty much any WSH script trigger a UAC prompt or failure, or just those performing functions that require administrative privileges? How about script in HTAs?

I had the impression that script that was "benign" (i.e. can run under a regular user) wouldn't see any special headaches or prompts on Vista.

 

[chelseatech]

Endless problems and perhaps we should have waited for another 6 months or so. But our users wil be trying to install our software on Vista, so we need to do this ourselves.

We decided to install Vista 64 bit on the new super desktop in our office and we've found all sorts of things don't work as planned. We have two apps that share some stuff in a local folder, but the folders are not where we think they are. Moving the apps out of the Program Files folder sorted some of that out.

Several old apps just don't install or work at all. We need to patch our Small Business server to add the new Vista machine properly to our domain.

We also have a .Net 1.0 framework app that doesn't install. It also used the SMTP service and that seems to be missing in Vista.

Interace is nice, but being asked if I really want to do what I just tried to do is a real pain. I wonder if the MS boys and girls actually used this themselves before they released it.

Editor and Publisher of Crystal Clear

http://www.chelseatech.co.nz/pubs.htm

 

[markdmac]

Much of the scripting I do involves writing to the registry which will trigger UAC. Writing to the HKLM hive is particularly troublesome on Vista (can't use WSHShell.Regwrite to HKLM).

HTAs need to be "approved" by right clicking then and choosing to allow them to run. (only if they were created on another PC).

I have an HTA that creates an ODBC connection. It will fail if the user is not an admin AND if not running with UAC turned off.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[markdmac]

I wonder if the MS boys and girls actually used this themselves before they released it.

Yes, Microsoft employees have been on Vista since before Beta 1.

the SMTP service and that seems to be missing in Vista.

I believe this was removed to prevent virus activity. I did some searching and there are a number of free or almost free solutions. Still I would have liked to have the choice myself. Here is a link to a free solution.

http://www.vista-files.org/programs/im-soft/advanced-smtp-server.html

Note: I have not personally tested it.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[Excalibur1701]

Vista may be ready for prime time if Microsoft admits there is a serious problem with Server 2003 where files mysteriously become "locked" while accessing file shares. This only occurs with Vista clients.

The only solution is to reboot the server. As for our company, we are sticking with XP

 

[markdmac]

Excalibur1701, can you elaborate on this? Have you ever called it in to Microsoft to report the problem? I've not heard of this issue before and I use Vista with 2003 server all the time.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[Excalibur1701]

Hello MarkdMac,

Here is an example of a daily occurence with one of our 4 Vista users. Let's say they open a Word document. After making changes to it, they save it to a network share that is on a Windows 2003 SP2 server. They then close the file. Now here is where it starts to get flakey. On occassion, when they go to open up that same file later in the day, they get an error. Something like..."the file is being used by another person or program. Close any program that might be using the file and try again"

When I look on the 2003 server, I go to "computer management" to see which files are opened. The file in question is not listed. When I try to access/rename the file from the server side, I get the same type of error.

Rebooting the Client does not release the file. The only solution I have that works is to reboot the server. Keep in mind that this occurs only on the VISTA clients. Our XP and NT 4.0 PC's do not have this issue. We have over 200 PC's, other then Vista, on our network. Not one has this problem. We have a mixture of Office 2007 and 2003 products as well. This occurs for both products...although it occurs more for 2007 then 2003. Probably a 90/10 ratio.

As an update to this, I've been reading about some issues with the IP6 network version on Vista. I am going to try to uninstall that version and only use IP4 on the Vista PC's and see if that makes a difference.

 

[markdmac]

You might want to try Unlocker:

http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

I've not heard of others having this problem and I have been using Vista since pre-beta 1, but I am only using IPv4. If you find it is related to IPv6 I hope you will post back here with your results.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[johnk]

What type of vista are you guys using? Business? Ultimate? Home Premium?


John Kisner

 

[markdmac]

I am using Ultimate on both my desktop (x64) and my laptop (x86).

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.

 

[cpjust]

Is it possible that another user has that file open?

I've noticed (on XP) that with MS Office 2003, every once in a while I'll look in Task Manager and see WINWORD.exe even though I don't have Word open. Sometimes it's even holding a file open after I close Word. I just End Task it and the file is no longer locked.

 

[Excalibur1701]

>>Is it possible that another user has that file open?

No. Each user has their own personal folder that only they have access to. The file still gives a "in use" error even after a reboot of the client. Also, the Server does not show that file as being opened.

I'll keep searching

 

[markdmac]

try the unlocker utility before you try the reboot next time.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at

http://www.thespidersparlor.com/vbscript

Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.